Rick Mather The Complete Works
Commissioned by the Rick Mather David Scrase Foundation, this book is the first comprehensive overview of Rick Mather's work. Drawing on Mather's personal archives, the accounts of colleagues, friends, clients and building users, as well as his surviving built works, it offers new interpretations of an architecture that sometimes puzzled the style-driven culture of its time.
One of the Foundation's principal objectives is to promote Rick's legacy as one of the leading architects of the late twentieth century. As a result, one of its first decisions following its establishment was to approach MICA, successor to Rick Mather Architects, to commission a major record of his career and a reassessment of his achievements.
Written by award-winning author Kester Rattenbury, the book explores how Mather's best-known projects, including his major museum adaptations at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Dulwich Picture Gallery; his dramatic chain of Chinese restaurants; his quiet, economical and environmentally proactive university projects; masterplans such as the South Bank; and the houses he had been designing since childhood, all interacted within a practice dedicated to creating "new" spaces from unlikely settings. Throughout his work, Mather consistently optimised landscape, urban and social contexts, ambitiously demonstrating just how much more can be achieved with less.
Combining Kester Rattenbury's perceptive text with MICA's meticulous compilation of drawings and photographs, this monograph aims to help contemporary readers gain a deeper appreciation of Mather's pioneering and wide-ranging contribution to architecture, particularly his early and influential work in sustainability.
MICA grew out of Rick Mather Architects and was established by partners Gavin Miller and Stuart Cade. The practice continues the legacy established by Rick Mather, with a focus on sustainability, masterplanning and elegant contextual architecture. MICA benefits from the same long-standing and highly dedicated team that previously worked at RMA, drawing on the same archives, history, professional knowledge and expertise.
We are delighted to present this extraordinary body of work, brought together for the first time in a single volume. The process of revisiting and documenting these legacy projects has been both fascinating and rewarding, revealing the enduring relevance of Rick Mather's architecture today.
To learn more about the Rick Mather David Scrase Foundation, click here.
To pre-order a copy of the book, click here.
